NO MORE PENCILS, NO MORE BOOKS
WHAT’S NEXT AFTER THE YEAR OF THE TEACHERS’ STRIKE?
In the colorful, often bloody annals of labor history, 2018 will surely be known as the Year of the Teachers’ Strike. Hundreds of thousands of teachers organized massive work stoppages across the nation, from the West Virginia state capitol to the streets of Los Angeles, taking a stand for their own rights as well as those of the students in their care. Some of them won stunning victories; others notched more modest successes, but their dedication and militancy turned their concerns—from fair wages and healthcare to the negative impact of charter schools on the U.S. public-education system—into headlines.
It also stirred up public sympathy for their struggle—a party line–crossing one that’s centered in predominantly red states saddled with Republican governments and anti-union “right-to-work” laws. Public-sector unions, which include teachers’ unions, are traditionally quite strong in the United States, but have limited recourse when push comes to shove; they’re barred from striking in many cases, including in many of the states that proved pivotal to the wave of 2018 teachers’ strikes. It’s legal, for instance, for public workers in Colorado and California to strike, but illegal in Arizona, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and West Virginia. Workers in those states went out anyway, participating in illegal wildcat strikes that showed just how serious they were about this fight.
The “Red for Ed” movement kicked off in West Virginia on February 22, 2018, but was the result of many years of movement building, particularly the intensive groundwork laid by the 2012 Chicago teachers’ strike. The driving force behind the 2018 strikes—which ultimately spread to Oklahoma, Arizona, Kentucky, North Carolina, Colorado, and California—was funding: for teachers’ salaries, pensions, healthcare, school supplies, and for the schools themselves. The Trump administration has sought to gut school funding every year for the past three years (Congress has rejected the proposals each time), and teachers and the American Federation of Teachers, the union that represents them, have been vocal about how much of an impact low wages and scarce funding has had on their abilities to do their jobs. As Vox notes, “According to a National Center for Education Statistics survey released in May [2018], 94 percent of teachers use their own money to buy school supplies,” while others have CONTINUE READING: What’s Next after the Year of the Teachers’ Strike? | Bitch Media
